Read Requiem for the Sun Online
Authors: Elizabeth Haydon
Requiem for the Sun (15 page)
To the north and west of the Crescent, great red rocky formations were strewn about the desert floor, some reaching heights of over one hundred yards. Their curves and hollows spoke of a time when they might have been supple clay, now fired in the kiln of the wind and sun into the hard, dry
skeletons that baked in the heat along with the rest of Yarim.
skeletons that baked in the heat along with the rest of Yarim.
There was something unnerving about this place to her, this open land ringed with dead red rocks and Yarimese guards; it was as if there were eyes somewhere, watching her, watching them, but hidden from sight in a place that had no natural cover.
She shook her head to clear it. “Very well. Show me.” She waved to the Yarimese guards, dismissing them. The guards looked at one another helplessly, then assumed parade rest.
Achmed reconnoitered for a moment, then took her elbow and led her to a sheltered place in the lee of a rocky formation, ten or so feet in height, where a small tent had been erected. He led her inside, then pulled off one of his outer veils that served as a cloak and tossed it on the ground at her feet.
“Sit.”
Rhapsody obeyed, heedless of the clay dust that crept into the drapes of the silken gown.
The Bolg king shrugged off the pack he wore across his back, removing from it a thin locked box fashioned of steel. Beeswax sealed the edges; Achmed ran his finger around them, melting the wax, then produced a tiny wire, with which he sprung the lock. With the greatest of care, he removed the contents of the box, wrapped in several layers of protective oilcloth. The cloth contained a few pages of brittle parchment, an ancient manuscript that Rhapsody surmised must have come from Gwylliam's library in Canrif.
He handed the drawings to her with the greatest of care; she took them with similar gentleness. The schematics were detailed in the painstaking detail she had seen in other examples of Gwylliam's work, meticulously rendered in a fine architect's hand, for that had been the training of the ancient Cymrian king before he had led his people away from the doomed Island of Serendair.
The schematic was of a tower of sorts, supported by beams or pipes of some kind, its fan-shaped ceiling set in panes of colored glass, ordered as the colors of the rainbow. The key that indicated each of the colors was in Old Cymrian, the common tongue of the Island that she, Grunthor, and Achmed had each spoken when they lived there, now considered a dead language by the people of this land, who spoke Orlandan, the language of the provinces of Roland, or the vernacular of their individual homelands. A separate drawing detailed a wheel of some sort, also set with panels of glass, or something like it, though clear, not colored.
She pointed to a series of notations near the bottom of the page. “Gurgus,” she read. “Wasn't that the mountain peak in the Central Corridor of the Teeth that had been smashed to bits by Anwyn's forces early in the siege of Canrif?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm.” Rhapsody turned the sheaf of papers slightly to better catch the diffuse light shining through the fabric of the tents. “This is interesting, but why are you showing it to me? You can certainly read this yourself.”
“This part I can, yes,” Achmed agreed. He ran a perennially gloved finger along the edge of the top page. “It is the page below it that I cannot, and am hoping you can.”
“What is this apparatus? Do you know?” Before the Bolg king could speak, Rhapsody quickly handed him back the parchment and put a finger to her lips. “Tarry a moment, Achmed.”
She rose from the dirt floor of the tent, pulled the flap aside, and stepped out into the blinding light of noon again. The wind whipped warm across her face, slapping her hair into her eyes; she turned in to it, allowing it to blow the strands clear. Then she drew her sword.
Daystar Clarion, the elemental sword of fire and starlight forged millennia before, came forth from its sheath with a whispering ring, a note that sounded quietly, a muted call of a battle horn. Drawing it in peace, as she had, caused it only to ring softly, vibrating gently in the sandy wind, but when it was drawn in battle, the call of the sword could be heard across continents, could shake the foundations of mountains.
Rhapsody held the sword aloft in the hot breeze, focusing on the metaphysical tie that bound her to the weapon. She could feel it resonating within her, humming in the same note, pulsing in time with her heartbeat and the breath of the elemental fire within her. Quickly she drew a circle in the air around the tent, a thin ring of light that remained even after the sword had passed from it, hovering on the wind. It was a circle of protection, a musical tone that would divert the currents of air around it and keep what was said within it from escaping onto the wind.
The silver circle undulated on the air, expanding and contracting with the changes in the breeze, but continued to hover, steadfast, flexible but unbreakable. Satisfied, Rhapsody returned to the tent.
“I have an uneasy feeling lately that someone is watching me. I don't know if it has to do with the work here in Yarim, but I think it's best we take extra precautions. What we say now cannot be overheard,” she said as she sat back down beside her friend.
He was staring at the pages, his mind clearly far away from the windy plain of Yarim. She noted the absence of focus in his eyes, and thought to herself how much his other nature, the Dhracian bloodline, was showing at this moment. Rather than the heavy, rough-edged angularity of the Bolg features that were apparent when he was around Grunthor and his Firbolg subjects, she could see instead the thin, fine veins that scored the surface of his skin, the
long, sinewy musculature and dark eyes of the race of his mother. He was very far away, she knew, lost in thoughts, most likely from the other side of Time, so she waited in silence until he was ready to speak again.
long, sinewy musculature and dark eyes of the race of his mother. He was very far away, she knew, lost in thoughts, most likely from the other side of Time, so she waited in silence until he was ready to speak again.
When his eyes finally cleared, he fixed them on Rhapsody for a moment, then turned back to the manuscript.
“I have seen something like this once before,” he said, his voice as sandy as the Yarim wind. “It was long ago, in another lifetime, long before we met in the streets of Easton in the old world.” He fell silent again.
Rhapsody pulled the green silken folds of her dusty skirt around her knees and waited.
“Someone I once served as guardian for â a rare and magical being â had an apparatus that looked very much like this. I only saw it once, but it would be impossible to forget such a thing. Like this, it was built into a tower in a clifftop monastery, though not in a mountain peak; Gwylliam had delusions of grandeur that made him feel he could mold the very Earth itself. In the language of its owner, the apparatus was called the Lightcatcher.”
“What did the apparatus do?”
Achmed shook his head, his eyes heavy with memory. “I am not certain. I do remember, however, that when the gravely injured were past the point of being healed by the monks or the priests there, they were taken to the Lightcatcher. Many of them returned, whole. When knowledge was being sought, the priests often asked â”He caught himself, his olive skin turning darker for a moment. “The one who possessed the machine was frequently asked questions that required the ability to see into the future, or across great distances, or into hidden places, and those questions were answered. There were other things as wellâthings that defy explanation that the Lightcatcher brought about. It was an instrumentality of great power. How it worked, and what its exact capabilities were, I am not certain. I have tried to follow Gwylliam's directions in the reconstruction of the one he built, but I cannot get the colored glass in the ceiling to the right thickness and porosity.”
“You are rebuilding this?” Rhapsody asked. “Why?”
The Bolg king studied the drawings before him. “If the scant records of the Cymrian War that were preserved in the library of Canrif are to be believed, part of the reason that Anwyn was not able to assail Gwylliam's stronghold for more than five hundred years was this instrumentality, and whatever powers it had. When she finally broached the mountains, the destruction of the instrumentality was her first objective. Such a powerful tool would aid in making the mountains secure.”
Hot as the day was, a sudden chill swept over Rhapsody. “Do you not believe the mountains to be secure, Achmed?” she asked, concern darkening
her green eyes. “Is there a threat that is unknown to the Alliance?”
her green eyes. “Is there a threat that is unknown to the Alliance?”
The Firbolg king shrugged. “There are always threats, Rhapsody. There is no such thing as a lasting peace, only long pauses between episodes of war.”
“Are you certain you and Anborn aren't related?” Rhapsody asked jokingly.
“If I were to be related to someone in your husband's odious family, I suppose he is the one I could endure with the least bad taste in my mouth. I respect his ability to not give a roasted rat's damn what anyone thinks of him. But as for your question, remember that I guard a mountain, and a Child who is the key to the Underworld for the F'dor. Even if we are at peace, I can never be overly prepared. The risk is far too great. And since you were named as the Earthchild's
amelystik,
you should be willing to do whatever it takes to tend to her as well, to assure her safety. Helping me in this regard will do that.”
amelystik,
you should be willing to do whatever it takes to tend to her as well, to assure her safety. Helping me in this regard will do that.”
Rhapsody sighed, then carefully separated the top pages of the sheaf from the older, more delicate page at the bottom of the pile, handing them to Achmed as she studied the last one. It was thin and cracked with age, the paper crumbling at its edges. The markings on it were in a script she recognized immediately, being the language in which Lirin Singers trained to become Namers: Serenne, the tongue of the Ancient Seren race, the progenitors of her homeland.
“There is a poem, or frontispiece of a sort here,” she said, studying the whisper-thin strokes of ink. “Serenne is based on musical script, and so it is somewhat hard to equate to spoken language.”
“Your best effort should suffice,” Achmed said impatiently.
“The poem is a sort of roundelay, a verse of a song, but the main lines read something like this:
Seven Gifts of the Creator,
Seven colors of light
Seven seas in the wide
world,
world,
Seven days in
a sennight,
a sennight,
Seven months of fallow
Seven continents trod, weave
Seven ages of history
In the eye of God.
She turned the parchment slightly toward the light. “It's graphed like a musical scale, which, by the way, is another seven â seven distinct notes in an octave, the eighth note being the same as the first. It looks as if this is just a part of the poem; the rest is missing.”
“Does it make any sense to you?” Achmed asked.
Rhapsody exhaled. “Not really, except that it is a list of significant sevens.” Her brow furrowed. “One of them seems out of place â the Seven Gifts of the Creator. I had always heard the elements referred to as the Five Gifts, fire, water, earth, air, and ether, so I am not certain what that means.”
“Can you read anything else?”
“There is a list of names beside the words for the different colors in the rainbow â shall I read them to you?”
“Yes.”
She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and bent closer to the parchment page.
“They are marked with the musical symbols for sharp and flat, almost like the signs for positive and negative, all but the last one.
Lisele-ut,
or red, Blood Saver, Blood Letter
or red, Blood Saver, Blood Letter
Frith-re,
orange, Fire Starter, Fire Quencher
orange, Fire Starter, Fire Quencher
Merte-mi,
yellow, Light Bringer, Light Queller
yellow, Light Bringer, Light Queller
Kurh-fa,
green, Grass Hider, Glade Server
green, Grass Hider, Glade Server
Brige-sol,
blue, Cloud Chaser, Cloud Caller
blue, Cloud Chaser, Cloud Caller
Luasa-ela,
indigo, Night Stayer, Night Summoner
indigo, Night Stayer, Night Summoner
Grei-ti,
violet, The New Beginning.
violet, The New Beginning.
When she looked up again, Rhapsody's face was pale.
“What have you found, Achmed?” she said nervously. “This is old magic, sacred and secret ancient lore; it worries me to see it out in the open like this. Only the most revered of Namers in the old world were allowed access to this sort of lore. These words are the basis of all vibrational code, which gives power to Singers' music, spell-weavers, healers, and others from the old land that could manipulate power through the vibrations of the living world.”
Achmed said nothing. He made use of vibrational lore himself, in his elemental tie to blood, the tie that allowed him to track and distinguish heartbeats. It was a power that had made him an unerring assassin on the other side of Time.
“What are you going to do with this once you have reconstructed this instrumentality, Achmed?” Rhapsody asked, handing him back the parchment sheets with great care.
The Firbolg king smiled from behind his veils.
“The same thing you have asked me to do here in Yarimâmake the lives of your subjects more secure.”
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